Losing Peter Evans
by blainesanity
Summary: In light of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, law student Blaine Anderson reminisces on his journey to self-acceptance.


**A/N: This was originally written for and English assignment. I just had to make it sneaky so no one would figure out that my characters weren't exactly original. In the class version, Blaine's name is Everett (hehe) because Blaine wasn't really a common name when the character was born. Also, none of the views in this story are reflective of my own and I don't mean to stereotype any groups of people. There are several homophobic slurs in the story, so if that bothers you, don't read. So, yeah. Please read and tell me what you think about it. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p><em>And now, more on the series of unprecedented violent protests that occurred late last week in Greenwich Village after police raided the popular gay bar the Stonewall Inn.<em>

Blaine Anderson's eyes flicked up from the law textbook he had been intently reading moments before to focus on the grainy picture of his small television. His eyes remained fixed on the screen as the newscaster proceeded to drone on in a monotone voice about the police raids that had taken place on Friday night and the continued rioting that had gone on throughout the weekend.

He listened for a few more minutes before reaching for the remote and turning off the old set, deciding it would be best to return to studying rather than dwell on the news that had been shocking New Yorkers and people around the country since early Saturday morning. Even his parents, who lived in the small town of Millersburg, Kentucky, had heard about the riots. They, of course, were scandalized by the news, and his mother had made a rare telephone call to gossip with him about the "brazen and disgusting show of impropriety". Blaine's suspicions that she had ulterior motives for the call were confirmed when her questions became more and more prying. He assumed she was probably fishing for insider information that she could tell to the other housewives, but he had nothing with which to appease her, even though he lived not far from where it had all happened, a fact his mother reminded him several times.

He sighed and settled back into the couch, returning his attentions to the case he was supposed to be researching for class. His mind kept straying back to the news, however, and when he glanced up from his notes, his eyes caught the headlines of several newspapers that were strewn across his small coffee table. _HOMO NEST RAIDED, QUEEN BEES ARE STINGING MAD. GAY POWER COMES TO SHERIDAN SQUARE._

Blaine shifted uncomfortably, now completely distracted from his assigned task. These articles, the news, everything that had happened in the city over the past week unsettled him. He wasn't quite sure how he should feel about what were now being labeled the Stonewall Riots, even though he—even though in a way he was just like the rioters in the street shouting about gay pride. Even though he was one of them.

Slightly disquieted by the thought, he moved from his spot on the couch to the small bathroom down the hall where he splashed icy water on his face in an attempt to calm his nerves, which were suddenly on edge. He still wasn't completely comfortable thinking about himself in those terms.

He took several deep breaths, and his heart rate slowly returned to normal. Raising his head, Blaine examined himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked the same as he had the day before, with his dark, gelled down curls, hazel eyes, and slightly stubbled jaw. And though he looked much as he had when he was a teenager, he was not the same person he had been back then.

At the age of 24, he was a man now, and he lived far, far away from the small, extremely conservative and religious community of Millersburg. He'd had made sure of that when he was applying to schools. His mother had been devastated, but his father, who had always dreamed of his son following in his footsteps and becoming a lawyer, couldn't argue with him when Blaine told him of his plans to move to the city, attend New York University, and apply to its School of Law upon graduation. He was now at the top of his class and was set to graduate at the end of the next year. He was well-liked and well-respected by his peers and professors alike, and he had no doubt that he would become a successful lawyer within a few years. Perhaps he would be even more successful than his father.

Yes, Blaine Anderson was not the same man he was eight years ago. But he wasn't the man anyone thought he was either.

His eyes fell upon the shaving kit his father bought for him when he had turned sixteen. A gift to symbolize his transition into manhood, he had told him. He took the leather bag off the shelf, unzipped it, and began to remove its contents. First was the brush, then the soap and the bowl. Finally, he pulled out the razor, examining the engraved metal handle before opening it to expose the blade. His father had insisted that he learn to shave with a straight razor. It was what real men used, he had said, and he was no longer a boy.

The pride that had shone in his father's eyes in that moment had made Blaine sick to his stomach. Because he was not the son his father was so proud of, nor was he the man his parents had raised him to be.

At one point in his childhood he had thought he was that man. He had been the perfect son. He was everything his father, who was one of the only lawyers in the small community and therefore a very prominent figure, had ever wanted in a son, and was a bragging point for his mother, who delighted in boasting about her son's many talents. He had secretly loved that his parents were so proud of him.

At the age of fifteen, he had been popular, his grades were perfect, he was a first baseman on the varsity baseball team, and he helped run Sunday school for the younger kids at his church.

But he had never been attracted to girls.

Of course, there had been pretty girls at school, despite the town's small population. There were even girls he even considered to be beautiful, but it was in an objective sort of way, and he never seemed to be as preoccupied with girls and dating as his classmates had been.

However, he had never been too concerned about it. He had come to the conclusion that he just hadn't met the right girl yet, and his mother and father had supported this theory, telling him that none of the young women in town were good enough for him. He just had to wait until he went to university. He would meet plenty of girls then, they had said.

Blaine sighed and tore his eyes away from his reflection to turn the tap to hot, deciding to go ahead and shave while he had the materials in front of him. He ran a towel under the hot water and placed it over his face, waiting for the rough hair to soften under the moist heat of the cloth. When he was sure the heat had had enough time to penetrate his hair follicles, he removed the towel and began to create a thick lather with the brush and soap. He spread the soap across the lower half of his face and his neck and began to shave, just the way his father had taught him.

As the blade passed over his cheek, he fell back into his thoughts about his childhood. Despite his apparent disinterest in girls, the Anderson family had been perfectly happy, if their lives were a little boring. His father made enough money so that neither he nor his mother had ever wanted for anything and the family maintained a comfortable routine. His mother spent the majority of her time taking care of the house and socializing with the women of the town, his father enjoyed his job and the prestige it brought him, and he had kept himself busy with friends and school. They had attended church twice a week.

Church had played a very important role in their lives, and the lives of everyone in he had known. There was only one church in town, First Baptist Church of Millersburg, and everyone attended service at least twice a week. Christianity was the basis of most things in the community and it always had been. Religion was so ingrained in him at the time that the idea of not being a Christian had been incomprehensible to him. That was probably why realizing he was gay had hit him like freight train and completely shattered his world.

In his sophomore year of high school, his class had taken field trip to the capitol building in Frankfort. The trip itself had been uneventful, but as they began the last leg of the tour, he had caught sight of a boy who was part of another tour group. He was tall and slender, with skin so pale it looked like porcelain, and carefully styled chestnut hair. He only noticed the boy because he stood out from the rest of the group not only due to his appearance, but because of the way he carried himself. His posture was slightly defensive, but the tilt of his chin was almost defiant. He was about to look away when the boy shifted his eyes right and looked straight at him.

His gaze stopped him in his tracks.

His eyes were a mesmerizing blend of grey, blue, and green, and as they held eye contact, Blaine felt heat creep up his neck and into his cheeks and his felt something he had never felt with any girl before, no matter how pretty: attraction. The boy gave him a small smile and looked away, leaving him feeling like he had been sucker punched in the face.

Finished shaving, Blaine wiped the lather from his face and rinsed off the blade of his razor. He didn't like thinking about the months and years after his trip to the capital. They had been the worst of his life. When he had returned home that night he hadn't felt anything but confusion at what he had felt when he'd looked at the strange boy. The disgust hadn't come until later, when he began to suspect that he was a homosexual. That he was one of the mentally ill, perverted criminals that they watched movies about in school. That he was one of the evil sinners that he learned about in church and bible study.

After the disgust had come denial. He remembered thinking that he _couldn't_ be queer. He wasn't sick and he wasn't a sinner. He was a good Christian who followed the Lord's will and lived by his Holy book. His parents had raised him right. He had just gotten mixed up because he hadn't found a girl that he liked well enough to go steady with yet. It wasn't as if he liked any of the guys in his class or on the team. He was just confused. So he had decided to date girls. Lots of girls.

But it had become clear fairly quickly that he wasn't attracted to any of them. He didn't want them in the way he should. He didn't want them like he had wanted that boy. And after months of introspection he realized he probably never would want women in that way. Like most people, he wanted a family and children and a white picket fence, but every time he pictured these things it was never with a woman by his side.

With the realization that he was, in fact, a homosexual came pain. Pain that he wasn't who his parents wanted him to be or who God wanted and expected him to be. Pain and shame. He was so ashamed. He felt dirty and worthless, and as his self-hatred grew so did his paranoia that someone, anyone, would find out just how sick, just how demented he really was.

So he had created Peter Evans. Peter was everything he should be, everything he had been before he had run across the strange boy in the capital. Peter was part Blaine with pieces of Marlon Brand and John Wayne. He was everything the old Blaine had been, only better. He was smarter, stronger, more masculine, and more devout, and whenever Blaine had felt like his homosexuality was somehow visible, he just pretended to be Peter. Peter had almost made his life bearable.

Blaine shook his head. He couldn't keep dwelling on the past like this. It wasn't healthy.

So he left the bathroom, shuffled to his room, and crawled into bed fully clothed. He pulled the quilt up to his chin and curled into a ball, trying to forget.

* * *

><p>"Hey, fairy!"<p>

"What's up fruitcake?"

Blaine looked up from his spot where he was lounging in the grass with his friends to see a group of burly football players hurling insults at a small, nerdy-looking kid. He sighed and looked away to continue his conversation with his friends. This was a daily occurrence at Davis High School that most students and teachers tried to ignore. A couple of years ago someone had started the rumor that Arthur, who was shy and scrawny, locked himself in his room at night and wore his mother's clothes, and David and his football player cronies had been tormenting the poor kid ever since. Blaine glanced back at the scared looking boy one more time before rejoining the conversation about the new movie that had just come out at the cinema, hoping that the argument didn't escalate to violence as it had many times before.

No one did anything to stop David from bullying Arthur out of fear that they would become his next target. Blaine knew that he should stop it, knew that he should stand up for the kid, but he was too afraid of his own secret would be found out and he would get the same as Arthur or worse.

_Be Peter_, he reminded himself, _Peter doesn't put up with fairies either. Be Peter and keep talking about Clark Gable with your friends._

"Leave me alone!" He heard Arthur yelling at his tormentors, though he was trying as hard as he could to drown out their voices.

"Aww, look, fellas, the little fruit wants us to leave him alone," David sneered. His friends laughed. "We'll leave you alone when we feel like it Abrams, got it?"

There was a beat of silence before Arthur retorted, "Maybe you just bully me because it's really you who wears your mother's dresses when no one's home."

Blaine's eyes snapped up. What was he thinking? Didn't he know that a comment like that would just guarantee that he got a beating?

And it did. Not just David, but all four of his friends started to angrily punch and kick at the boy until he was bleeding on the ground, and then they kept going. Everyone in the schoolyard watched in horrified silence as the football players beat the kid unconscious.

Blaine closed his eyes to block out the horrible scene and said to himself_, Remember, if you're not Peter, you're going to be Arthur._

* * *

><p>Blaine awoke, feeling sick to his stomach. It had been a long time since he had thought about Arthur, though the incident had haunted his thoughts and dreams for months after it happened. The boy had been beaten so badly that day that he had to be put in a wheelchair. Blaine hadn't known how to feel about it. Of course he was upset that the boy had gotten so hurt, and he was angry with David and his friends for what they had done to him, but a part of him had wondered if the boy had deserved it. What if he really was gay? Wasn't that what all homosexuals deserved? Wasn't it what he deserved?<p>

He rolled out of bed, recoiling slightly when his feet hit the cold floor. No, he didn't think he or anyone else deserved to be treated that way anymore, but he had at the time. He was so broken back then.

He showered and brushed his teeth, deciding to forgo breakfast, before descending the steps of his tiny walkup. He was supposed to be meeting a group of his friends in Brooklyn and he was already late.

When he finally crossed the bridge to Brooklyn and made it to the café he and his friends frequented, he found them talking in loud voices about the last week's riots. He almost considered turning around and leaving, but his friend Wes spotted him before he could make his escape.

"Anderson! Hey, get over here! We were just talking about those queens in the gay bar not far from you."

Blaine forced a smile and pulled up a chair to sit with his friends who continued to talk about the riots, throwing around words like "fairies", "faggots", and "fruits". He tried his best not to flinch and to keep a straight face as the conversation devolved into a competition to see who could tell the best gay jokes.

"A guy from Pershing Square said his relationships didn't last long because they all _bored_ him in the _end_." Laughter.

"A queen went to a florist and asked him if he sent flowers. When the florist said yes, he asked if he could be shipped to Chicago because he was a pansy." More laughter.

"Okay, how about this one? What do you call a married fairy? Forbidden fruit."

Blaine tried his hardest to laugh along with them. He desperately wanted to leave or feign illness, but he was afraid of giving himself away.

He didn't know why their comments were affecting him so much today. It certainly wasn't the first time he'd heard people tell jokes like that. Maybe it was in light of the dream he'd had and the memories it had brought back, but most likely it was just the knowledge that these men, his friends, were talking about people like him, and would reject him in an instant if his secret ever got out.

They weren't bad people. To the contrary, Blaine thought they were very good people. He'd met Wes, Nick, Jeff, and David in law school and they were in the same graduating class. They were usually kind and generous, and they were very funny. But they, like most everyone else, thought that homosexuals were sick, that there was something wrong with them.

And that's why he still hid who he was.

In the nine years since he realized he was gay, Blaine had resigned himself to the fact that he was never going to be attracted to women. He had mostly stopped hating himself and had slowly reconciled his religion with his sexuality. But he was still too afraid to be as open as those men and women at the Stonewall Inn had been. He'd stopped dating girls as a cover up in his sophomore year of undergraduate school, but he didn't try to find anyone. He didn't even seek out gay friends for fear of being called gay by association.

So he sat there while his friends tossed around insults that felt like they were aimed directly at him.

After a few minutes, the conversation shifted to topics Blaine was much more comfortable with, and he allowed himself to relax into his seat as they discussed school and family and internships. But in the back of his mind, Blaine was still unsettled. His friends' comments had hurt him.

Two hours later, Blaine was making his way back to his small apartment. The route he travelled was familiar, but things were different today. As he made his way through the Village, he heard and saw many people, several whom Blaine knew to be gay, still excitedly discussing the riots. This had been a common occurrence over the past week, but what stood out to him we're the snatches of conversation he was hearing.

"It was a long time coming, I'm just glad they fought back."

"I know! Jim was so moved that he came out to his brother."

Greenwich Village was known for having a burgeoning gay community and was usually more positive towards homosexuals than the rest of the city. It was for that reason that he had been reluctant to live there. But he had been willing to endure the taunts of his friends and the concerns of his family to at least be close to more people like himself, even though his sexuality was still a closely guarded secret.

When he reached his apartment, He threw his keys on the counter and collapsed onto his couch. He tried to clear his mind and just go to sleep, but he had been in a strange mood since news of the riots had broken, and the dream he had had earlier that morning had only intensified his unease.

Unable to tear himself out of his sad, sentimental state, Blaine hauled himself off of the couch and made his way to his bedroom closet. He pushed aside his hanging clothes to reveal a large trunk in the back of the closet. He hesitated for a moment before he lifted the lid.

Nostalgia hit him hard as he examined the contents of the trunk. Inside were letters he'd written over the past few years, pictures of his friends and family, his letterman jacket from high school. Blaine dug through the other objects in the trunk. In the back corner he found what he was looking for: a small stack of leather bound journals.

Blaine picked up the one on the top of the pile and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He had started to journal after his trip to the capital. He couldn't talk to anyone about his internal struggles, so he had had to write them down.

He took a deep breath and began to flip through the pages, glancing at the entries. He felt sharp stabs of sadness as his eyes caught some of the scribbled words on random pages. Disgusting. Sinner. Evil. Back then he had truly hated himself for what he was.

He kept flipping until he ran across a page full of bible verses. At the top of the page was a shakily written verse. _You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (Lev. 18:22)_

He glanced at the date in the top hand corner of the page. June 17, 1961. He remembered that day clearly because that was the day that Pastor Leavitt, a man Blaine had known since he was a child and respected above anyone else, had confirmed his worst suspicions about how God really felt about homosexuals.

To his horror, he had walked into church that Sunday morning to discover that the sermon was going to be about the "sin of the homosexual". Once the opening prayer had been said, the pastor had begun to discuss at length why God hated those who had sex with members of the same sex.

"There is no doubt that God condemns all homosexuals," he had said. "He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for the perverted homosexual acts that took place there and the Bible gives us even more indisputable proof of the Lord's hatred of those who practice sodomy." And then he had read verse after verse of his proof.

_In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1:7)_

_Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men__nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (Corinthians 6:9-11)_

_If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. (Leviticus 20:13)_

The pastor had assured the members of the congregation that those who fornicated with members of their own sex or even felt attraction them would never reach the gates of Heaven and would be eternally damned.

Blaine had stared at the man in the pulpit, fighting nausea, and when he got home that night he had written down every verse that had been mentioned in church, every word that damned him to hell. When he was finished he had fallen to his knees and prayed to be fixed, begged for forgiveness and salvation. He prayed until his mother forced him to come down for dinner.

He'd sat at the dinner table in silence while his parents discussed the news and his father's work. When dinner was over and he was clearing the dishes from the table, his mother had placed her hand on his shoulder and asked, "Are you alright, dear? You were awfully quiet during dinner and you barely touched your chicken".

He'd hesitated a moment before he asked, "Do you believe what Pastor Leavitt said in church today about—about homosexuals? Are they really not going to go to Heaven, even if they're good Christians?"

A frown creased his mother's brow. "There's no such thing as a Christian homosexual, Blaine. They're all evil. You know that."

He had nodded quickly and headed back up the stairs to his bedroom. He'd cried himself to sleep that night, feeling condemned by his own thoughts.

It was after that day that he stopped pretending to be Peter Evans and started to become him. He knew that if his family or anyone in town found out he was a homosexual he would be thrown out of his house. His parents would stop loving him. Maybe he'd even be put in a mental institution. So he'd just let himself slowly stop being Blaine. He stopped struggling with himself and stopped questioning his sexuality and his chances at salvation because Peter had never laid eyes on the boy in the capital. Peter had always been attracted to girls. Peter was a good Christian.

It wasn't until he moved to New York two years later that he'd finally started to let go of Peter. His paranoia had lessened the father away he'd gotten from his hometown, and he hadn't felt the need to keep up such an intense façade. He had started to get more of his old self back and he'd learned to cope with his sexuality. If he didn't love who he was, at least he didn't hate himself anymore.

He glanced out the window. He could see people in the street, probably still gossiping about the riots. He remembered what that man in the street had said earlier. _Jim was so moved that he came out to his brother._

Blaine was still hiding. He still sometimes pretended to be Peter, especially in the hyper-masculine environment of law school. But he was slowly regaining the parts of himself that he had repressed for years. Maybe some day he could be as brave as the Jim he had heard about and the other countless people who had been inspired by the riots to reveal their sexuality to the world. He wasn't ready for that yet, but he was slowly losing Peter Evans. And he was sure that one day he would lose him forever.


End file.
